


Rubies

by spookysu



Category: Original Work
Genre: Astral Projection, F/F, Konkokyo, M/M, Oni, Tengu, Violence, War, because or else no one will read it, but i have to say it's fiction, this is actually a true story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-04-18 05:18:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookysu/pseuds/spookysu
Summary: The beginning and gruesome end of the Third (and hopefully Final) Tengu War, and a story of corruption.





	1. Chapter 1

_You've blown it apart_

_Doors burst open_

_The King strolls forth_

_Lord of mountains_

_Stands by your side_

_Weapons drawn_

_And the black cloud descends_

_On red eyes and black wings_

_A murderous group_

_~Tank (@scienceisadesiretoknow on Tumblr)_

\--

The Third (and hopefully Final) Tengu War began quite suddenly, yet somehow, there was a feeling of unease settling in the mountain before the clouds of feathers gathered in. But it wasn’t an unease that settled within me initially. Sure, before the fact, I had been rudely assaulted by an invading onmyouji, but he was taken care of and being an oni, it wasn’t entirely uncommon for people to hurt me for the “greater good.”

All those days ago, after the assault, Ura, one of my closest confidants, sat with me in the onsen, asking me if I would be okay with joining forces with him. I remembered thinking that it had sort of come out of nowhere, but with how empathetic Ura was, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if he knew the war was starting long before I did. 

Of course, I agreed. The two of us would be protecting all of the oni in the Kansai region, and someone as kind and intelligent as Ura was someone I would always want on my side. I trusted him with my life. 

_Perhaps it’s about the future,_ I had thought to myself. I knew, vaguely, about intense spiritual changes years from now, especially since the state of the world has been so uneasy. Of course, I didn’t know details, but it was something I had heard of from various entities and left a strange, sinking feeling in my heart. 

Of course, it was about the future, just far closer than I had anticipated. 

I had watched from the balcony of my old house as dark clouds rolled in. Strange weather wasn’t unknown in the astral; the climate was far moodier than anything I saw in the human realm. But I heard a familiar, high-pitched song as the clouds rolled in.

This wasn’t a thunderstorm.

The tengu were coming. 

Their voices were normally perfectly on-key, something the drunken oni songs tended to lack. There was always a harsh, raspy undertone to it, the crow part of them coming out in their voices, but when they sung their battle songs, the rasp became sharp, like scraping metal together. It never failed to make the hair on my arms and neck stand on end, and I knew that was exactly what they wanted.

There had to be thousands of them, creating icy tornadoes beneath their collective wingspans. At first, I thought they were layered, the higher-ranking daitengu flying above subordinates, but I noticed that the giant black shadow above them was only one tengu. I didn’t see her up close, but I felt her chilly aura instantly. 

Ibaraki.

It had been years since I had seen her, yet I always felt her talons in my neck; whether or not it was the scars of trauma she left behind, or invisible claws taking away my skin, stroke by painful stroke, was unclear. Yet here she was, wearing the flesh of her own, descending upon the beautiful mountain I called home. Even though she was clad in her own skin, it felt as though some of the power she held was my own, as though the sinews she tore from me gave her strength.

A real parasite.

“We need to get the children out of here,” Ura said to me, his voice a low rumble in my heart. “Sound the alarms. If there’s gonna be war, we need to make sure there’s the least amount of casualties possible.”

I couldn’t make my vocal cords work. It was as though the cries of the tengu took the energy I needed to make a sound. Instead of speaking, I simply gave him a bow and a salute and ran off to find the modern officials of the mountain. 

I found Tora, my old sister-in-arms, first, and she was already aware of what was happening. She stood on the snow-dusted grounds of our mountain, staring at the skies as two oni children hid behind her legs. 

“Is that Ibara-gen’s army?”

She used the “gen” honorific, indicating hatred. The only other person I had heard her use “gen” for was myself, but that was playful. This held bitter hatred of multiple centuries, the hurt of betrayal. 

This held murder in her voice.

I still couldn’t speak. Instead, I sunk to my knees, tears falling freely from my eyes.

Ibaraki murmured an Onikan curse under her breath, but I couldn’t understand what it was. “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice coming out in a low growl, rumbling in my heart as Ura’s had, “I’ll keep you and everyone safe.”

I opened my mouth, a raspy cry escaping my lips. I could tell Tora was fighting the impulse to hug me and the children, but instead, she ran toward where Ooeyama’s protective forces lived. 

“Are we gonna die?” one of the children asked me. Her eyes were bright and blue, glittering sapphires beneath the salty waters of her tears. Her hair matched her eyes, her skin still holding the pallor of youth. 

It was then I found my voice. “We’ll keep you safe.” 

\--

We did what we could. Tora and Ooeyama’s modern army, as well as assistance from Ura, his boyfriend Kibitsuhiko, and their mountain’s army kept the invading tengu at bay, while my daughter--Ishi--and I ushered civilians and children to safety. 

Thankfully, the oni of Ooeyama were attentive to their surroundings and knew there was something wrong nearly immediately and were already ready to evacuate. The adult civilians and their children headed toward human villages and kind shrines as fast as they could, but this unfortunately didn’t count the oni orphanage along the border of the human world and that of the spirits. 

“I have a good friend who’s a priestess at a Konkokyo shrine,” I said to Ishi. “I bet they’d be really happy there.”

Ishi nodded, chewing on one of her lip rings. “Do you need to give her notice? There’s probably around three hundred children here.”

“It’s an emergency,” I said. “She’d understand.”

Ishi nodded, and we pulled open the sliding doors to the orphanage. It was a rather tall building, almost a pagoda, but in the darkness of the war-vibes of the astral, it seemed as though it were muted and discolored. 

All three hundred oni children were in the lowest level, peeking through cracks in the door and windows, huddling under blankets. They had moved their futons down so they could all sleep together, huddling together in safety. It would’ve been cute had the situation not been so dark.

“We need to take them off of Ooeyama,” I explained to the orphanage’s caretakers. “We’ll be taking them to a shrine a bit of a ways from here. One of my best friends runs it.”

“We trust you, Shuten-douji,” the oldest of the caretakers had told me, “as we trust your daughter, but may we come with them? Someone needs to make sure they don’t destroy the place.” There was a tiny, almost bitter laugh. I was relieved to see my people still attempted humor at a time like this, but it still made my heart feel like a vibrating stone, threatening to break through the skin and bone of my chest. 

“I’ll lead the way.” I had never been to my friend’s shrine in the astral, but somehow, deep within my stone heart, I knew how to get there from here. The astral, as long as you trusted its wavelengths, tended to align itself toward my needs, and was behaving quite well for me, considering. Was that the power I held within myself?

Either way, we traveled under the cloak of darkness, staying quiet behind the screams of death, escorting three hundred orphaned oni children through what they liked to call the _Kha’ra_ , the “in-between,” so as to not arise suspicion among the tengu. 

Today’s youth of Ooeyama was rather well-behaved, surprisingly enough, but they were oni. Unfortunately, it was customary of our kind to be familiar with hardship and cruelty, and these orphans were no stranger to it. They knew how to behave in the face of humanity’s evil as well as the war against the tengu kingdom.

As we filed into the Kha’ra, one of the oni tugged on my arm. “Can I call your friend _haha_?” she asked me, her eyes wide. Her eyes were a honey-brown, colors shifting as we passed by the many spirits on their way to other realms. 

“If she’s okay with that,” I replied, ruffling her short, choppy hair. “I don’t speak for her.”

_Haha_ roughly meant _mommy_. It broke my heart that this oni child wanted a mother so badly that she would cling to a friend of a clan elder. But now wasn’t the time for me to dwell on that. It was time for me to make sure she and all of her friends could make it to safety.

The Kha’ra reminded me of the underground train stations in the human world; grey, cold, echoing with the voices of many people--some who you could see, others you could not--and moving far too quickly to be comfortable. It was a place of hiding, of all the sketchiness the afterlife and various spirit realms told in scary stories after dark. It was also where all worlds connected to, where everyone passed through to travel, but few lingered in.

“Stay close,” I ordered the children, knowing they definitely had the impulse to wander, being what they were and their age. 

I heard high laughter in the distance, the scream of the dying, and felt all three hundred orphans huddle in closer, as if they wanted to fuse into one mass. 

“You’ll be okay,” I heard Ishi say. “As long as you stay with your elders.”

Oni weren’t the kind of people to pull rank, but with all the cultural storytelling, oni children were likely to respect those older than them. They knew that older oni have seen a lot and lived through even more and it was important to trust their judgement for safety. It also helped that, unfortunately, oni children had terrible, often violent lives. Knowing all this, I knew that the oni weren’t immediately gonna treat Ishi, me, and the orphanage attendants with disdain, but rather, with respect. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if I should tell them stories of my past someday, when the war blows over. But we would have to win for that to be a factor, of course.

I felt the hands of thousands of passing spirits, the confusion of the recently deceased as they moved onto their purification. Some of the oni pushed the hands away, only to watch their own pass through them. Others cried, clinging to their friends and crushes. I paid them no mind, not because it wasn’t concerning, even though I knew what they were, but because I knew I had to be strong for the little ones.

They had to survive, as did we.

Despite the odd sensations and cries of the young ones, we all made it through to the other side, passing into the spirit parallel of my friend’s shrine. Unlike the aura of the mountain, here was brighter, more cheerful, yet felt paused, as though the spirits surrounding it were holding their breaths.

_Himiko left_ , I realized then. My friend was visiting her family in another country. She wouldn’t be here to help the children. Cursing my forgetfulness, I felt myself begin to cry.

“What’s wrong?” Ishi asked. “They’re safe now. I don’t think the tengu will come this far.”

“Himiko isn’t here,” I replied, my voice coming out much angrier than I intended. 

“That doesn’t mean the shrine is alone,” Ishi said, patting my shoulder. 

I didn’t know how to respond at first, so I just watched the orphans. The children were already dispersing, listening to a buzzer sound while they ran around. A few started scaling the building. Others ran off to find humans to play with. 

“They’ll be fine,” Ishi reassured me. “Promise.” She put a first over her heart.

I returned the gesture and bowed. “I’m gonna pray to Kamisama for our safety before I head back home,” I told her. “I would stay longer, but…”

“I understand. You have a war to fight, Ma.” Ishi was an adult woman, yet she still called me ma. The modern Japanese-centric Onikan sprinkled in Japanese terms with Onikan, yet Ishi still used the Onikan word for mother. It made my heart sing a little, but I didn’t want to gush over her too much. I knew she didn’t like it.

I did, however, give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I trust you,” I said. She still smelled the same as she did as a child, somehow. I didn’t want to let go. There was a part of me that was worried I’d never see her again, even though I was sure she’d be safe.

“I trust and love you, Ma.”

Holding back tears, I headed into the shrine to pray. I knew Kamisama wouldn’t mind if I wasn’t overly formal, since he was more than aware and loving toward my kind, but also because of the stress of the situation.

I was sure there were preparations to take aside from cleansing myself--which I did, of course--but I wasn’t too familiar with Konkokyo. Instead, I collapsed on the ground.

“Please,” I sobbed. “Kamisama, if you’re listening, help my people. I don’t care if I need to die, just make sure they’re safe. I’ll do anything.” 

I couldn’t say more. My body wouldn’t let me.

All I could do was stain the shrine with the filth of oni tears.


	2. Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a motion of her finger, I felt myself falling into a bow. I resisted with every inch of me, feeling blood pour from beneath my fingernails, my nostrils, between my teeth, and out of my eyes.
> 
> “Bow to me, darling. Show me what a good wife you once were.”

There's an intermission 

A moment of speech 

And the darkest eyes

I have ever seen

grin with a smile that's nothing but crooked teeth

-Tank (@scienceisadesiretoknow on Tumblr)

\--

Somehow, heading back home through the Kha’ra felt longer than the journey to the shrine. Perhaps it was the dread of what would be in store for me--and for everyone, really--back at home. It wasn’t like I intentionally dawdled--rather, I rushed as fast I could past the crying deceased and the calls of the vengeful spirits--but the Kha’ra felt as though it grew longer and longer.

After all, time didn’t exist in the Kha’ra, so traveling within it could feel as though it took moments or years. There was no way to tell. 

Nobody wants to live in a state of in-between, in the realm where terrifying spirits such as myself pass, and I could feel their hands on me, gripping tighter than before. They clung to me desperately, crying to go back to their realm, whichever it may be. Some of them were human souls wanting their lives back. Others were youkai like myself, feeling lost and confused on their journeys between realities. Sometimes, I would stop and save them from themselves, but this time, I had too much on my mind.

Just what  was happening on Ooeyama?

I slid open the door, visualizing the location and spirit realm, and stepped out of an old weapon’s closet beneath my old house. Normally, there would be a clutter of old, broken weaponry and tools collecting spiderwebs and dust in haphazard piles and shelves, but it had all been cleared out. At first, I worried that I accidentally walked into the wrong parallel of Ooeyama, but from the angry oni shouting from above and the vibrations of war-drums, I knew that it was right.

The oni were daring to use old, broken weapons. They were so desperate to protect their homeland and their own lives that they would turn anything into a tool for death.

Trying not to shudder too violently at the thought of inexperienced warriors dying from their rusty weapons giving out on them, I walked through my house, heading for the front door. In the light streaming through the windows and cracks in the doors, dust hung in the air, unmoving. It was as though the house itself had its own fears regarding the war and it was holding its breath.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this old place was sentient. It was far too old and had seen too much to not start gaining a soul of its own. But this all would be something to explore later. 

Later.

If there  would be a later. This was assuming we’d win. And with the sight of Ibaraki, it didn’t feel plausible.

I pulled the door open and slid sideways through the gap, careful not to bash my horns into the threshold. My home was up rather high on the mountain, and with the elevation, I could see my people, colorful and angry, brandishing whatever weapon they could find, facing a hoard of tengu, nothing but waves of feathers as far as the eye could see. 

“It’s so nice to be home,” a cool voice said. “Or, rather, my home away from home.”

I could  feel the anger of my people as they clenched their weaponry closer to them, partially to protect themselves, partially ready to attack the speaker. But when I diverted my attention from my people to the speaker herself, my heart fell into my stomach, a stone falling rapidly into the depths of the stormy sea. 

Ibaraki was addressing her people, just like old times.

Not  her people.

My people.

They never really were  her people, much to her dismay. Back in the day, oni use to be slaves to the tengu, doing all forms of manual and sexual labor for the lazy bird-spirits. Ibaraki, born a royal tengu, had fallen for her personal handmaiden oni, and when she was caught, the oni was publicly executed, and Ibaraki lashed and shunned. Meanwhile, my kind was rebelling against their tengu captors, a war led by me, my girlfriend, and my best friends. In order to atone for her crimes, Ibaraki had pretended for centuries to be one of us with the expressed purpose of killing off myself and my friends. 

As I watched her create something resembling a tengu form, her slimy, slug-like skin gathering together like clumps to form tengu appearance, red eyes sparkling beneath the darkness, I remembered how her talented, shapeshifting self had us all fooled. She wasn’t as honest as oni, of course, but she played the part of at least looking like us, with the brilliant blue skin and blue eyes. When she got deeper into the dark parts of onmyoudou, though, her eyes became duller until they turned a red she couldn’t shift out of. 

Before it was revealed what she truly was, I had taken her as a sort of plain, bitchy oni that I didn’t get along with. She was given to me as a prize bride, as a symbol of peace between our races, but of course, it was all a ruse.

All a ruse to get me killed and offer Ibaraki redemption.

All of this will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth, and when I could seek revenge, hundreds of years ago, I did. But I guess I didn’t kill her well enough, cos here she was, addressing my people she was about to kill. 

“This mountain never belonged to you,” she had began, her annoyingly musical voice ringing and echoing throughout the horizon. “You took it from my people through force. I was sent to clean up the mess you started, thanks to the brat leading you.” 

Her eyes met mine, and my whole body shook. 

Instantly, I was flooded with memories of her using onmyoudou seals on me, rendering me powerless as she ravaged my body, burning me, lashing me, raping me to her heart’s content. She was assigned to murder me, sure, but Ibaraki was a predator who liked to toy with her prey. 

“The mountain doesn’t belong to anyone,” I tried to shout in return, but it came out as a hoarse whisper. 

Her eyes flashed, and I felt myself crumbling, my legs numbing as I collapsed to my knees.

“Bow before us like you used to, Shuten-douji.”

I gritted my teeth. Searing pain swam through my veins, like kappa dragging their claws throughout the river bed, digging up the dust of repressed memories. I remembered screaming as she dug her nails inside me, laughing as tears poured down my face and blood dripped between my legs. I remembered not being able to make a sound as she used wards to silence me, the burning sensations of onmyoudou rendering me helpless as she tossed me around like a weightless child.

And with all of this, I wasn’t sad.

I was livid.

“I will  never bow to you.”

She stepped closer, balancing somehow perfectly on her tengu geta. “I’m much more than your boring wife now, Shuten-douji.” She said my nickname and honorific with spite, as though she were only ironically referring to me as the leader of the mountain. “I have more power than you could ever imagine, and these tengu here respect me more than your people could ever respect you. They will die at my command. And because of your refusal to cooperate and hand over the mountain, you shall suffer.” And she smiled.

Ibaraki never was one with pretty teeth; they were always irregular, jagged, and oddly sharp, like many youkai. Yet the messy charm of ugly teeth on oni was lost on her; somehow, they marred her otherwise plain appearance. But now, they were horrifyingly white, like the kimono she wore over her sluglike skin. The horrifying smile splitting her maw--it was hardly a mouth anymore--sent more searing pain throughout my body.

With a motion of her finger, I felt myself falling into a bow. I resisted with every inch of me, feeling blood pour from beneath my fingernails, my nostrils, between my teeth, and out of my eyes.

“Bow to me,  darling . Show me what a good wife you once were.”

I tried to say no, but all that came out was a high-pitched cry. I wasn’t even aware I could make that sound.

“Stop disrespecting her!” I heard someone shout, but their voices sounded far away, as though my ears were full of blood, too.

There was a fleshy, blunt sound, the familiar disgusting clash of oni attacking, then a slicing sound. The painful control Ibaraki held over my body subsided for a moment, so I lifted my head.

The bodies of the oni with the rusty weapons were strewn apart, sliced to bits.

They had died coming to my defense.

Ibaraki let out a low humm. “I’m impressed your underlings are so willing to die for you when you’re so powerless. Too bad they never learned what a real leader looks like.” A motion of her hand, and I was flattened to the red-stained snow.

“Kill them all,” she hissed. “Destroy what the oni have tainted. Destroy everything Shuten-douji loves. Let the little rebel suffer.”

And thus, the war of my nightmares had begun.


	3. Ink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was responsible for the deaths of brainwashed tengu who would never see their communes or families again.
> 
> I was responsible for the stench of death tainting the late winter on this gorgeous mountain.
> 
> I was the reason the melting snow dripped red.
> 
> Don’t forget how this is all your fault, I heard a nasty, nasally voice say in my head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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_So we rally_

_Once more and again_

_There’s death and there’s soundless arrogance_

_We should have ended this_

_So long ago_

_But her eyes burn_

_Seeking out one_

_~Tank ([@scienceisadesiretoknow](http://scienceisadesiretoknow.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr)_

Over all the years I have been alive, I have gone through many changes; tastes in fashion, music, food, opinions over trivial matters. But one thing that has never changed is that people who like violence are disgusting.

I’m not talking about friendly sparring among buddies, or martial arts. I’m talking about war. Killing. True bloodshed. Fighting someone with the intent to make them breathe their last breath. It doesn’t matter if your method of chilling is gunfire, watching your enemies bleed and fall from a safer distance, or smashing skulls until blood, shards of bone, and brain matter squelch from beneath your club, or sliding your sword through hearts, pushing bits of the life-organ out of bodies with force. It’s all the same. It’s all vile, and people who gain pleasure from it are sick.

That didn’t stop my laughter from bubbling up when I did feel myself gain lives as I fought, and I hated myself for it. I knew it was a trauma reaction, something I couldn’t control, but I wasn’t feeling joy. I felt cruel. And terrified.

As I took tengu after tengu, smashing their skulls with my kanabou, watching mysterious slime escape their bodies as they fell, I could feel Ibaraki gaining on me. She wasn’t on the mountain now, from what I could see, but these ruby-eyed tengu were like her slaves. 

It was truly as though she had fed them all bits of her disgusting soul, and she lived in each and every one of them.

It wouldn’t surprise me. Whenever I felt those dangerous, suicidal thoughts, those moods where I wanted to shut off from everything and destroy the world, the times where I didn’t gain happiness from anything, I knew she was inside me. And if she could get inside me, she could get in anyone.

War was–and always has been–a fucking blur. If I stop and reflect on things, everything is out of order.

The feeling of Ibaraki’s talons on my neck, digging into the deep scar from all those years ago, reopening the wound from my soul and spilling it onto the snow beneath. I could feel blood escape along with my spirit, seeping down my neck, my pulse in my eyes. We were flying higher, higher, far beyond the mountain. My ears popped. I couldn’t hear my cries of pain or Ibaraki’s cruel whispers, but I could feel them.

The sensation of souls leaving their bodies as I took the tengu lives. It felt almost like the wind itself escaping their bodies, like the energy of the skies themselves lived beneath their skin. I could feel the sky mourning their death as well as icy sleet mixed with the mountain snow.

The feeling of loss. Due to the current life I live far from my old mountain home, I wasn’t as familiar with the local oni, especially younger generations. Yet somehow, watching them fall and choke out their last breaths, spit out their last words with drops of blood, I felt a little part of my soul die with them. Even though I didn’t know them, they were still somehow family. They were all a part of me, a mesh of interconnected, lonely souls, only now, they went back to hell. I knew life was everlasting and death was only temporary, but it didn’t make death happier.

These young oni soldiers were losing their lives as they knew it, and I was wrong.

But despite all the hardships, all the tragedy, I still fought. There was a part of me–a cruel, disgusting part of me–that turned off my ability to emote while fighting. In the heat of the moment, no matter how much blood had been shed, no matter what I saw, I was a woman of impulse, a killing machine. In a way, I suppose bloodthirst  _is_  an emotion, but to me, it’s not one I’m proud of. It was thrilling, sure, in the way that any activity one had to be completely engaged in was, but it was disgusting. Vile, even. I remembered after watching the bodies I was responsible for piled, I could feel vomit rise in my throat.

I was responsible for the deaths of brainwashed tengu who would never see their communes or families again.

I was responsible for the stench of death tainting the late winter on this gorgeous mountain.

I was the reason the melting snow dripped red.

 _Don’t forget how this is all your fault,_  I heard a nasty, nasally voice say in my head.

“It’s not  _my_  fault that you’re a weakling, Ibaraki,” I felt myself hiss in return. “You were too weak to stand up for the oni lover you had in the past, so you let her die and became a criminal to your people, alone!”

A tengu had descended upon me at this time, and I struck him down with a sickening splatter.

“You were assigned to kill me, right, Ibaraki? That’s why you were given to me as a prize bride. You would make me love you, get my guard down, and then you’d kill me, right?”

With a frantic swing and a scream that echoed to the mountains in the horizon, I struck down two more.

“You couldn’t make me love you. Even you trying your damndest, all you did was rape and abuse me, and in the end, when you ran away from the mountains? I was the one who killed you!”

Tears streamed down my face as I mashed in the skull of a tengu coming from behind.

“So, does your status as a fucking tengu princess mean that much to you? Then  _FUCKING KILL ME ALREADY!_  Do your fucking worst, Ibaraki!”

I felt someone grab my shoulders then, and I fell behind a bush. I flailed at my captor a bit, and I felt hands cover my mouth.

“Ibaraki?” I asked through the hand.

“No,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m here to help.”

The way this person spoke revealed herself as a tengu, and my stomach churned, but when I turned to look at her, she lacked the horrifying red eyes of the other tengu. Instead, a gentle aquamarine looked at me in their place.

“Why?” I asked.

I never got my answer.

I heard the clash of metal by my head. My eyes met none other than Ibaraki herself, the rubies glittering brighter than all the fresh blood combined on the mountain alone.

“I’d be happy to kill you,” she drawled, leaning on a nearby branch. The ink leaking from her wings spilled around her, melting the snow and killing the grass with a hiss of steam. “But is a quick execution all that fun?” She chuckled. “I do like to toy with my prey.”

I saw her blade move, and I instinctively moved my kanabou to block, but I heard a clash unlike the sound of sword-on-club.

The mysterious blue-eyed tengu had protected me. I couldn’t see her eyes at the moment, for her back was to me, but I could feel the fire within her, especially with the angry ruffles of her black feathers.

“A rebel, huh?” Ibaraki tisked. In a swift motion, she knocked the tengu’s katana out of her hand and held her blade to her throat. “Did you fall for one of her kind? Did their uncivilized ways and rough sex seduce you out of being a woman of the skies as you really are?” She dug the blade in a little deeper on the flesh of her neck. “Do you know what the daitengu do with cute little rebels like you?”

Before neither the tengu nor I could react, she lifted the girl to the skies. Somehow, with her newly-acquired abilities, she was able to make herself even bitter, an inklike monstrosity with glowing rubies for eyes. It was hard to make sense of her form, but with the squelch and screams and falling feathers, I knew exactly what had happened.

The girl’s wings, covered in blood, fell onto the ground, followed by the sickening crack of her near-lifeless body.

I screamed.

The shrill shrieks of the tengu, living and dying, were one jarring thing to hear, but there are legends that speak of the horrifying cries of my people. Within it contain the raw emotions of years of enslavement, cruelty, discardation from all species, and raw passion.

It truly is a horrifying sound to hear, but it was one I couldn’t help but create.

I collapsed to my knees beside her body, and her trembling hands reached my face.

“Long live the queen of Ooeyama,” she said softly, in the oni tongue.

“Why did you do this?” I asked her.

She smiled, blood slipping between the cracks of her lips. “Bury me,” she said. “Make sure I try to find peace.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Should I bury you with your wings?”

“Please,” she said with a stiff nod, “so I may find them in the afterlife and fly again.”

Ripping the wings off of a tengu as cruel as ripping the horns off of an oni. It’s a huge source of their power, their energy, their personality, their very essences. Ibaraki was damning one of her own people to becoming a lost, lonely soul, and I would do what I could to make sure this girl wouldn’t become that, even if I only knew her for a few minutes.

She did save my life, after all.

At the moment, I couldn’t feel Ibaraki anywhere, and that was almost scarier than knowing where she was. The girl choked, sputtering blood, and didn’t move again.

I murmured my prayers to kamisama, ignoring hot tears singing my frostbitten cheeks, and slid her eyes closed. I didn’t have a shovel, so I began digging into the dirt with my hands.

Other tengu descended beside me, all looking similarly blue-eyed as she had.

“Idiot,” one of them said.

  
“If you call her an idiot upon her death, I’ll gut you like I have countless others of your kind.”

The tengu man shook his head. “She was far too bold to save you outright. Truly an odd one of her people.”

I supposed it was strange for a tengu to do something that outward, but I appreciated those who didn’t show their love or hate shadily. It aligned with oni morals so much better. “Can you at least help me bury her, or are you just going to insult her?”

“Of course,” he chuckled. “I’m her brother.”

“Brother?”

“We hatched at the same time,” he said, handing me a shovel.

I wasn’t sure where he got it, but it seemed ordinary enough, possibly something from the human world. “Who are you people? You’re not a part of Ibaraki’s army?”

“We’re from Ibaraki’s mountain, but we serve Soujoubou-sama.”

Soujoubou. The tengu who was responsible for everything. At the end of the oni rebellion, he gave me Ibaraki as a demonstration of peace between our people. He had plotted my demise, and I therefore had no love for him.

“How does this make me trust you?” I asked, evening out the sides of the frozen earth.

“Just know that you and I have a common enemy. Soujoubou-sama, of course, wants his mountain back, but he wants Ibaraki dead more. Consider us allies.”

I nodded grimly, unsure of what to say next. He helped me lower his sister’s body into the makeshift grave and carefully placed her wings between her hands.

“In tengu tradition,” he explained to me, “the wings will disappear within three days. We will then burn her in her gravesite.”

“So she’ll be okay?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I will check back in three days. I’m not sure what Ibaraki is capable of.”

My mouth felt dry. “I’m not sure, either.”

He gave me a polite bow and balanced on a geta, straightening his wings and dusting off his hands. “There is a war around us, and I must leave you now, but thank you for burying my sister.”

“Yeah,” I said, because I wasn’t sure what else to say.

With a gust of wind, he took off to the skies, and I shivered.

I placed some branches from the bush she hid me behind to mark her grave, then headed for my allies on the mountain. Instantly, I wished he hadn’t left me, for the mobs of tengu appeared to grow thicker.

The sky grew darker, but not through nightfall. It felt as though everyone was Ibaraki now, and they were all becoming stronger, surrounding me with their shrill cries, sharp swords, and sharper beaks. Kanabou will always crush the well-crafted steel of tengu swords, but I was far outnumbered. I felt them pierce my skin–I wasn’t sure if it was one, five, or dozens–and the darkest energy I could fathom seeped into the slices they left behind.

“ _I got you!_ ” I heard Ura roar in the distance. For a pacifist, he was terrifying when angered, and somehow became even bigger than before. He rose above the crowd of long and lanky tengu, smashing aside the crowd, silencing their screams with decapitation.

I fell to my knees and heaved, the same blackness that escaped the tengu as they died slipping between my lips. It tasted putrid, like the most acidic phlegm I could imagine, and somehow, I knew it wasn’t mine.

Ibaraki was already inside me.

And it was then when I knew I needed assistance. Ura, the warriors of Ooeyama, and myself weren’t enough to hold back the horde of inky wings. Even though we had killed so many it was hard to make out where the bodies ended and the skies began, there were more coming.

It was as though Ibaraki had cloned herself dozens of times, making cheap imitations to do her dirty work.

“Can you hold the fort?” I asked Ura, leaning against his back, ready for more incoming tengu. “I need to ask for backup.”

“Please,” Ura wheezed, wiping black smears from his lips. “Get anyone you can.”

And desperately looking behind me, I ran from the battle, ready to find other friends.


	4. Welcome, Welcome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Welcome, welcome," they said in unison, giving polite bows as I walked past them. "Welcome, welcome."
> 
> I didn't feel very welcome.
> 
> The further I got up the stairs (and the more chills I got up my spine from the polite "welcome"s), the more horrifying the tengu became. Everything about them was white; their skin was the color of paper, their hair the purest white it glowed in the low sunlight.
> 
> But their robes.
> 
> At first, I noticed small stains. Tiny red splatters of what was definitely blood. But the closer I grew to the mansion's front doors, the more dramatic the splatters became. Some of the tengu had their entire fronts covered in blood. Others had blood on their porcelain faces, and it dripped from their angular noses to the steps.
> 
> "Welcome, welcome," the final tengu addressed me before the doors. When she stood from her bow, her hair fell behind her shoulders and out of her eyes.
> 
> Or where her eyes would be.
> 
> There were just empty sockets, full of blood spilling down her sheet-white cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is LONG AS FUCK and I was going to apologize, but I spent so much effort on this, and Hoshi is teaching me to not apologize for every damn thing I do, so enjoy!
> 
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_And I will grow claws,_

_And fly into this war,_

_Pluck the rubies from her skull,_

_And present them on one knee,_

_A knight in your service,_

_Lord of the mountain,_

_In service of a King._

_~Tank (@scienceisadesiretoknow on Tumblr)_

\--

After the gravity of the war, it was hard to lead a "normal" life in the human realm. Most of my days, I lived with my wife (also an oni), Hoshi, and paid bills, worked, and held hobbies such as writing as I am now. But it didn't feel real. Grief was settling in already. I would see flashes of threats and violence before my eyes. When getting ready for work, I would collapse in tears in the shower, remembering watching the blue-eyed tengu die. Remembering my friends and allies dying. Remembering taking other lives.

It was hard, being soul-awake constantly. All entities needed rest, even oni leaders. At night, when my body slept, I would travel to the astral, and during the day, I had my "human" duties. And I was exhausted in every sense of the word.

Even so, I managed to grab the attention of two of my best friends in the human realm; Himiko, the priestess I mentioned earlier, and Himekami, the Hachiman of Kameoka, Ujigami of the Date Clan, and renowned scholar in the human realm.

When I was awake in the human realm, I had kept my friends (and wife, of course) updated on what had been happening on Ooeyama, but a question I had been meaning to ask came from Himekami.

"Would you like my help?"

Tears spilled soundlessly from my eyes. "Yes. I need your help."

Our conversation was through text, since we all lived thousands of miles apart, but I could tell she was happy. Not happy about the war, but happy about the fact she could help.

"I didn't want you to feel weak if I offered," Himekami said. She deeply understood an oni's need to be strong.

"I don't feel very strong," I admitted, "and I could use all of the help I can get."

Himekami proceeded with reassurances, words of affirmation, as well as names of soldiers from her clan who she could bring with her, but her text fell to blind eyes. Even though I responded and read, it was though my brain was incapable of actually taking in the information.

Himiko, whom Hoshi and I had known for centuries, was quick to jump into the astral to figure things out about Ibaraki, when she returned with news, the fear settled in greater than ever.

The conversations with Himiko were quite lengthy, but in essence, she discovered two things: that Ibaraki couldn't be killed, and we were tied with the red strings of fate.

"I can get Loki to help me with getting the scissors to cut the strings. Do you have any strange pain right now?"

I knew Loki--the jotun and Norse deity--and Himiko were quite close, but it wasn't something she talked about too often, nor was it something relevant to the war at hand, much. So we didn't get into it during this conversation. "My throat and neck. I've been getting sick, and I feel like I can't quite breathe."

Himiko didn't seem necessarily satisfied with that answer, but that she knew what I was talking about. "One of the strings is around your neck, so if she dies..."

She didn't need to finish what she said for me to understand. "But...I killed her in our last life."

"That only tied you two closer. You have so much unresolved, and someone like Ibaraki will hold onto that."

She explained how she was going to get the scissors and how it would take some time, and then went on to describe how Ibaraki couldn't die.

"At least, not in the traditional war sense," Himiko had said. "She had divided her soul up into three different artifacts hidden all over the East. There's one in Japan, one...somewhere in Korea, I think...and another in China," she explained. "But I'm not sure where or what they are."

The one in Japan felt obvious to me, so I shared. "She has a realm where she's from, in Kurama. I know she went back and forth from there a lot, so if she was going to hide a piece of her soul somewhere, I bet it'd be there." I thought for a while about it, then continued. "Tora has some routes and boytoys in China, so I'm sure she can help you there. She likes to travel. And as far as Korea goes...Ura's from there. I'm sure he'd be familiar."

Himiko seemed to find these tidbits helpful and agreed to talk to them for assistance.

"For Tora to help you, though, I'm sure she'll need to feed." I explained Tora's condition, how she needed the blood of the living to have energy, and Himiko seemed to have no issue toward this.

"Try not to attract attention to yourself while I search. Ibaraki is bound to know someone is finding her souls, and I don't want it to draw attention to you. But it seems that the war has been dying down a bit recently, right?"

I nodded, then remembered Himiko couldn't see me. "It has been calming down. We've been mostly caring for the injured." I chewed my lip as my fingers tapped on the screen. "I hope it's alright that I've been sending the children and the mortally wounded to your shrine. I know kamisama would be welcoming."

"Of course! They'll be well taken care of there."

We chatted more about logistics of caring for the wartorn children and where the wounded would rest while Himiko was away from Japan, then she departed to the astral with Tora and her company.

I tried my best to relax in the human realm, but I still felt nauseous. It was hard to not do much about the war when I was waiting for Himiko.

"Are you okay?" a human friend of Hoshi and me had messaged me.

I explained to her what was going on, struggling not to cry. I wasn't sure how much detail to share, with needing to be stealthy around Ibaraki, so I shared what I felt I could.

I could feel the emotion coming from her as she responded, even though it was all text. The part of me that felt like a nuisance wondered if I was only detecting pity because I wanted to, but I shoved the thought out my mind when I got a question I didn't expect.

"What can I do to help?"

It was all I could do to not sob. I didn't feel like any of this was really a valid thing to be concerned about, in a sense, because it wasn't happening immediately in the human realm. So many people couldn't even detect what was going on. But with the friends who had been offering to help, it moved me.

So I suggested the one thing I figured she could do without attracting too much attention.

"Could you perhaps...care for some of the wounded?"

She was thrilled to assist, so the next time I went into the astral, roughly a human realm hour after the conversation, I told my daughter, who was helping attend to the wounded, that they could be sent to her home in Canada as well.

"I hope Canada doesn't attract too much attention," Ishi said to me in a low voice as she bandaged an oni's wound. "I would hate to drag humans into this."

"All we can do is hope for the best, at this point," I replied, patting her between the horns.

She nuzzled my hand gently, something she's done since she was small, but didn't say more. Ishi often didn't say much. Her actions spoke louder than any pretty words could. And her current actions of helping wounded soldiers and reassuring touches meant she trusted me and would do her best to help her people and community.

After I left Ishi to bringing the wounded to the safe locations, I checked in with Ura to communicate future plans. I told him everything, starting with Himiko's findings about Ibaraki and finishing with our new assistants.

Ura, like Ishi, wasn't much of a talker, but he was a great listener. I fidgeted with my hangnails with anxiety as I waited for his response, and he took his time thinking about what to say.

"I trust Himiko-xa," he decided, using the most honorable honorific in the oni language. "I'll gladly escort her about Korea, though I know it's changed a lot since it was my old stomping ground." He spun a ring he kept around his finger, a thick, metal band engraved with peaches. It was a gift Kibitsuhiko had given him, though I wasn't sure whether or not they were actually married yet. Ura liked to take things slow. "Have you spoken to Tora-xa about helping in China?"

"I was just looking for her, actually," I said.

He laughed abruptly, a sharp sound I wasn't used to hearing from him. Usually, his laugh was full of life, but now, it was reminiscent of the tengu I had seen falling from the sky. "Aren't we all." It wasn't a question.

"Did Tora-xa do something wrong?"

"She's been...a bit unstable. It's been hard to get her to agree with ceasefire until the Ibaraki situation is handled."

I grimaced. Tora had been by my side through all of the horrors of my relationship with Ibaraki. She wasn't as close as Hoshi was to the situation, of course, but she wasn't logical and cool-headed like my wife. While Hoshi was a warm bonfire keeping friends close and warm, Tora was a raging forest fire, not caring whose trees she burned along her ways of passion and anger.

"I'll deal with her. I'm guessing Himiko will catch up with you soon for errands."

He inclined his head politely. "Kibitsuhiko will be keeping watch while I'm away with her."

I didn't want to say goodbye to Ura. I had the irrational thought that, if I did say goodbye, then it would be the last thing I said, because I didn't know what Ibaraki had waiting for him in Korea. So instead, I said, " _Si'ku evixa gan_." I love you. Platonically.

He embraced me, scooping me in his arms and twirling me in the air. Ura wasn't a small man by any stretch of the imagination, and the distance I was from the ground was jarring. But I didn't mind. I hugged him back, biting back tears.

When we did finally part, I followed the sensation of Tora's aura. She was pacing in the common area of my house, her energy flaring like the forest fire she was.

She paused as she saw me. "What. Come to scold me, too?"

I sat before one of the tables, motioning for her to sit across from me. "I wanted to tell you about Himiko."

She tilted her head slightly. "The priestess friend of yours?"

"Yes." I explained all I had told Ura, but with far more venom. Ura's presence was calming like Hoshi's, but Tora somehow brought the ugly hatred out of me. I loved Tora, but sometimes her presence drove me up the wall, making me far angrier than I felt I should have been. This war was a game of minds, since it involved Ibaraki and her people, and when angry, my mind wasn't clear.

It was exactly what the bitch wanted, I was sure.

"Anyway," I said with an exhale, "I need you to escort Himiko about your...trade routes...in China. I feel like you may know where she hid the piece of her soul."

She bared her fangs and tusks in a smile as demonic as the legends made her. "Leave it to me. I have ideas." And she stood, the ground quivering as she ran off to find Himiko.

I flopped backwards on the tatami, the room spinning before my eyes. I felt out-of-focus, nauseous, and impossibly angry. I also felt a familiar someone's presence near, a faint laughter just slightly in earshot.

And that's when I realized.

Ibaraki wasn't in my house at all. She was communicating her emotions with me in the nasty ways she did, playing with my body.

And she knew that we knew about her souls.

\--

All I could do was wait. Keep my aura as inconspicuous as possible, don't move too much, don't speak. Hopefully, if all went well, Ibaraki wouldn't notice me, and Himiko and her assistants could destroy the objects.

But staying low profile wasn't easy, being the loud and passionate individual I was. I wasn't quite as much of a forest fire as Tora, nor was I as comforting as the bonfires that were the essences of Ura and Hoshi, but somewhere in the middle. Perhaps I was a bonfire catching onto driftwood, beginning to rile up the gathering of people on the beach, escaping the firepit.

Besides, I had to still exist normally in the human realm, which was near impossible. I had difficulties staying awake. I was starting to become very violently ill. I could barely focus on anything. And existing was painful.

At least this phase of the war didn't last long; soon, I got word from Himiko. With the help from Loki and the oni, she had gotten the threads cut and the objects destroyed.

"The first one was in her domain in Kurama, like you said," Himiko had informed me. "It was...some sort of stone full of needles?"

I recognized the object, seeing it in my regular tortures. I knew it was used sort of like voodoo was talked about in the West, but didn't know much about it otherwise.

"She also had some of your hair. Don't worry, I destroyed it."

"I knew she did," I replied, feeling bile rise in my mouth. Having someone's hair only meant one thing--control. And control was an obsession of Ibaraki's, especially control of me.

"Well, it's gone now, thankfully. Not that she'll be able to return to her home for it anyway."

"How was the destruction of the others?"

"The one in Korea was in Kiringul Cave, and Ura was really helpful in finding it. She was using...some sort of necklace? I don't know what the significance of it was."

A necklace. "Perhaps it's something Ayako gave her."

"Ayako?"

"Her long-term lover and follower. She's a really slimy tengu. She was assaulted by a daitengu in her commune and murdered him out of rage, so when she was caught, she was publicly lashed and exiled. My clan felt badly for her, so we let her in ours. Of course, this was before...other clan members knew about Ibaraki being a tengu. The two of them were  _real_  cozy. Disgusting."

"So she's still learning Dark Tao from her?"

"I'm sure she's still out there. I've had encounters with her influencing other people. She's got this...really smooth, oily voice. Tall and super thin, almost wiry."

"I feel like I've seen her," Himiko said.

"Probably, if you've spent a lot of time in the astral." I cleared my throat, desperately trying to get the bile out of my mouth. Even thinking of Ayako made me quake with fear and nausea.

"She's probably angry now that we're killing her girlfriend. I'll be sure to keep an eye out."

"We all should." My tongue burned with acid. "What was the third?"

"Well, Tora fed from me and it was...intense." If this conversation was in person, I knew Himiko would be giggling and blushing. "She licked her lips and looked me in the eyes and...anyway. We went to Yushan and had to sneak past some hermits. The object was a hexagonal mirror. We smashed it, then we had to find her energy quickly and seal it. We don't have much time now before she gets angry and attacks."

I took a breath. "So it's now or never?"

"Essentially. We all need to hurry to Ooeyama."

There wasn't time to say much else. The warning was given to me, Himekami, and Hoshi all at the same time, and we all fell right into the astral.

\--

Hoshi and I appeared in the astral together, arms linked. This wasn't a frequent occurrence, mostly due to Ibaraki meddling with her conscious abilities and memories in the past.

"I'm not going to remember this," Hoshi said to me, letting go of my arm and slipping her fingers between mine, "but please tell me if I do any cool shit, a'ight?"

I laughed and snuggled against her, despite the shaking in my knees. "I'm really glad you're here."

"I'm glad I'm able to be. Now let's fucking kill this bitch."

We headed into the fight together, holding hands during the war briefing. I saw Himiko, studying a book, some crystals floating beside her. She seemed so airy, so powerful.

I saw Himekami's Date troops, too, screaming war chants and waving flags with their crests.

I also saw my pulse in my eyes, so I couldn't really focus on the war briefing. I knew I had spoken to all of our allies, but it wasn't something I remembered, either. It was one of those things where my mind shut off and my body just behaved.

It wasn't as though I was saving my mental energy for fighting Ibaraki, either, because aside from charging at her screaming--in the terrifying way my kind can--kanabou in hand, I didn't remember much.

I remembered the taste of her blood between my teeth, the inklike putridity seeping down my throat.

I remembered her blood in my eyes as I swung my kanabou, the splatters of her flesh spraying across my body and hers...if what she had could even be called a body anymore.

I remembered being brought higher, higher in the air, my blood mixing with Ibaraki's in my eyes as I was held by my ankles, desperately trying to hit her but always just out of reach.

I remembered hearing Hoshi's war cry as she tried to protect me.

And then I remembered falling.

\--

Nothing after the fall made sense.

I landed into a body of water, yet it didn't feel as firm as I would've expected. There was a gentle splash, and warmth hugged my body, which also didn't make sense because it was late winter, and the bodies of water near Ooeyama were frozen over still, possibly barely cracking.

I opened my eyes under the water and exhaled a little. It wasn't too deep, at least as far as I could tell, and was full of healthy kelp. Kappa swam beneath me, but they paid me no mind for now.

I swam, desperately reaching for the shore, and came up for air when I came up empty.

My surroundings were beautiful.

And I was absolutely terrified.

I was in a sort of body of water near a gorgeous, Western-styled mansion. The mansion itself was just over a cliff, but a pathway to my left led to the front door.

I knew exactly where I was.

This was Ibaraki's astral realm.

I remembered when she first created this realm with her Dark Tao, when it was nothing more than a tiny shack on a hill. She used to use it to torture me far from the rest of Ooeyama so nobody would find out her true nature. The energy she drained from me as she lashed, raped, stabbed, and drugged me gave her more power, which made this place even more extravagant and beautiful than before.

This was where I went in the nightmares that plagued me every night.

I swam breaststroke--my best stroke since I could remember--to the shore, the water still eerily still despite my swimming. When I climbed out, there were towels waiting for me, and the chill of the late evening air settled onto my exposed skin. I shook out the towel, suspicious.

"Don't worry," a gurgling voice said behind me, "we got them for you."

I turned to see a small, wrinkly hand and the top of a turtle-like head peeking out of the water.

The kappa were in my corner.

"Thanks," I said with a tiny bow--not enough to convince them to spill the water in the dish on their head--and dried off.

"Kill her," the kappa said.

"We will." It didn't feel right to say  _I_ , because killing a creature of this magnitude was definitely not something I was personally capable of.

The hand gave me a thumbs up before sinking back beneath the surface.

I wrapped the towel around my shoulders and headed up the path. There were neat stairs along the way, looking as though someone freshly swept them. When I had climbed up these exact stairs before, I remembered them being rocky, uneven, my face being slammed into them regularly as Ibaraki slid her weaponry inside my delicate areas. If my friends and I were about to kill her, I wondered why she didn't make it as dangerous as then.

Maybe it wasn't under her control.

As I made my way up the steps, I began to notice white-winged-and-robed tengu, their hands pressed together.

"Welcome, welcome," they said in unison, giving polite bows as I walked past them. "Welcome, welcome."

I didn't feel very welcome.

The further I got up the stairs (and the more chills I got up my spine from the polite "welcome"s), the more horrifying the tengu became. Everything about them was white; their skin was the color of paper, their hair the purest white it glowed in the low sunlight.

But their robes.

At first, I noticed small stains. Tiny red splatters of what was definitely blood. But the closer I grew to the mansion's front doors, the more dramatic the splatters became. Some of the tengu had their entire fronts covered in blood. Others had blood on their porcelain faces, and it dripped from their angular noses to the steps.

"Welcome, welcome," the final tengu addressed me before the doors. When she stood from her bow, her hair fell behind her shoulders and out of her eyes.

Or where her eyes would be.

There were just empty sockets, full of blood spilling down her sheet-white cheeks.

I swallowed my scream and bowed back, and she opened the door with a blood-covered hand.

"Hello?" I called into the mansion.

"Welcome, welcome!" a chorus of tengu responded.

None of them had eyes.

Knowing Ibaraki, I figured it was some sort of mind game to get me scared, so I just bowed and thanked the tengu. They bowed again, blood spilling on the flawless marble floor.

A small tengu stepped to the center, blood spilling down her cheeks and nose, her smile never fading. "We've been expecting you," she said, "Shuten-douji."

"You have?" I asked, eloquent as ever.

"Yes. Our Lady talks of the End Times when her enemy would destroy our pocket of paradise. And this sounds like a terrible thing, doesn't it?"

I said something intelligent, like, "Uhhh..."

It didn't matter if I said anything or not. "It's a wonderful thing. You're really doing us all a service."

"Service," the chorus of tengu said.

"A service of releasing our souls to the highest of heavens. Releasing us from the bodies that hold us prisoner."

"Prisoners no more," they chanted.

"Your killing of us is only helping on our journeys, so we thank you. And as a token of our appreciation, feel free to look around at our tools we've used for our training for what's to come."

I crossed my arms. "So...you're not going to try to attack me?"

Every tengu in the vicinity laughed.

"Why would we attack our Savior?"

All I could think was,  _Damn, Ibaraki got herself a cult full of dumbasses who believe her trans-body-isms._  Ibaraki had always been intensely spiritual to the point of suicidal and homicidal, and it wasn't surprising she had dozens upon dozens of tengu who bought into her bullshit.

"How do I destroy this place, if y'all wanna die so badly?"

"Oh, don't misunderstand. We won't die. We'll just lose these bodies that hold us prisoner."

"Okay, um. How do I destroy the place?"

"There's several vials in the basement that will help you."

I threw my hands in the air. "Great, a fucking puzzle."

"Training the mind is good for the soul."

"Yeah, whatever."

I ignored their chants of "Training the mind is good for the soul," and tried to find my way around the mansion.

The entire wall facing the body of water--which was seemingly endless and had a setting sun in the horizon--was made of a glass window. There were glass steps leading up and down stairs, and I decided to investigate in the upstairs first.

It was nothing but hallways with locked doors, names scribbled on the placards, with a door at the end, but every time I reached the end of the hallway and opened the door, the same hallway restarted, just with subtle changes to the doors. The placards began to fade, names changed, and some placards were completely removed. Eventually, giant bloody x's were left instead of placards.

One door was ajar.

I went inside.

It looked sort of like a modern dormitory, with bunk beds, art on the walls, books in various unfamiliar languages, and a bathroom. When I went inside the bathroom, I noticed that there were vials upon vials of fingernails.

There was a paper on the counter, covered in blood.

"Master the body and your soul will find freedom," it said.

Disgusting.

Hoshi and I always thought it was fake-deep and gross when Ibaraki would sacrifice fingernails to have power over her body, but I supposed she had taught others to do the same.

"Master the body and your soul will find freedom," a soft voice said behind me.

I turned to see one of the eyeless tengu, holding a bloody spoon.

"What the fuck?" I said, with all my maturity and grace as leader of Ooeyama.

I pushed past her and left the room, stomach churning, until I found a tengu before every door, holding a spoon.

"Master the body and your soul will find freedom," they all said.

There was a sickening squelch, a plop, and the tengu turned around, blood pouring from their eye sockets.

I wanted to scream, but I knew this was yet another of Ibaraki's games, so instead, I just went back the way I came, down the stairs, down to the basement.

Bloody spoons were left on each stair, droplets turning into trails of blood.

"Do you like our studies?" one of the tengu asked.

I ignored her and headed down to the basement.

The place was almost vacant, aside from three vials of a glowing liquid and a switch.

"Fuck you, Ibaraki," I hissed through my teeth. I didn't want to solve her shit. I didn't want to watch her "disciples" scoop out their own eyes. I just wanted her dead. I wanted everything she could get close to loving dead.

And I wanted this realm from my nightmares gone forever.

I saw a kanabou in the corner of the room, and I picked it up. It was Ibaraki's old one, one she was given but never used, since she preferred the art of the sword. I gave it a test swing. The balance was different than mine, but it was simple enough.

With a swing, I destroyed it all.

With every glass shard that fell from the vials, glass fell from the house. The mansion began to crumble, and me with it. I kept smacking it until I couldn't feel my arms, but there wasn't really a target, just me and my anger.

Ibaraki was the target, I decided, but she wasn't here. Just the Ibaraki I could picture.

"FUCK YOU, IBARAKI-GEN!" I shouted.

And the world began to dissolve.

I was falling again, splashing into the water, only this time, it hurt. I couldn't see very well, but I could feel the tiny, scaly hands of the kappa reaching my arms.

"This way," they gurgled, leading me on. "Swim under here, and you'll be safe." The kappa hesitated. "Don't worry about us. You're the important one."

I felt in front of me, and touched what felt like a glass wall. It was the edge of Ibaraki's realm.

I swam up for air and turned, watching the glass shatter into glitter as her mansion collapsed.

Nothing would ever be so satisfying.

But I needed to leave so I wouldn't be destroyed, too.

I took a deep breath, and then swam down.

It felt as though the swim was endless. My lungs burned, and I exhaled slightly, pushing against the wall of glass to find the exit. When my hands found the gap, I felt the kappa's arms push me through, and I fell through backwards, my hands slipping out of theirs.

They waved goodbye as the realm exploded, and I was propelled to the next place.

\--

I felt hands pull me out of the water.

It was cold again, familiar snow falling on my skin, burning to the touch as frostbite began to overtake me. I wiped the quickly-developing icicles from my eyelashes and looked up.

There was Hoshi, Himiko, Himekami, and Tora.

"The bitch is dead," Hoshi said. "Let's get you home..."


End file.
